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BenLeffler
Participant
May 14, 2010
Answered

"Flash can not parse this document" - CS5 Issue

  • May 14, 2010
  • 28 replies
  • 143226 views

Help! I have an FLA which CS5 has apparently corrupted on a save... (When you load up the FLA in CS5, it now fails and sends "Flash can not parse this document" to the output window.

Unfortunately I only found the corrupted nature of this file AFTER I had conducted my regular routine of backing up my files - which means the backed up file is ALSO corrupt. I'm shooting in the dark here, but is there any way that the FLA can be recovered? Desperate as this is a project I have worked the last month on.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers,

Ben.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer nrajbhan

    Hi,

    We discovered that the file becomes corrupted due to the empty frame in the following asset:

    1. Open the FLA in Flash CS4

    2. Open the Library panel.

    3. Browse to _movieclips & bitmaps/_gui/_menu wheel/Gui_Wheel_ButtonOverlay_On and open it for edit in symbol-mode.

    4. Insert a keyframe in Layer 2 of that movieclip.

    5. Save FLA

    Thanks for sending us your FLA so we could narrow down the problem.

    -Nivesh

    28 replies

    Show previous replies
    L
    lowellsgustafson
    Participant
    June 17, 2010

    I too have this problem  I saved my fla file and then tried to open it later.  It told me that Flash cannot parse this file.  What do I do?

    W
    wbfreek21
    Participating Frequently
    June 17, 2010

    See my previous post...

    W
    wbfreek21
    Participating Frequently
    June 1, 2010

    I was able to solve this problem for a corrupted .fla file. Here's what I did to solve it:

    1 - change the extension of the fla to zip so you can unzip the fla into its folder structure (flv).

    2 - within the LIBRARY folder, there is likely some asset that is causing the problem. you must figure out which one (or more) it is. you can do this by simply removing files from that folder until your file opens successfully (open the flv file in the root).

    3 - once you have the xml files that are causing the problem, you can actually fix them by going in and removing the empty frames. in mine, the part of the xml i removed looked like this:

    <DOMLayer name="Layer 2" color="#9933CC" current="true" isSelected="true">

              <frames/>

            </DOMLayer>

            <DOMLayer name="Layer 4" color="#FF4FFF">

              <frames>

                <DOMFrame index="0" keyMode="9728">

                  <elements/>

                </DOMFrame>

              </frames>

            </DOMLayer>

            <DOMLayer name="Layer 3" color="#FF800A">

              <frames>

                <DOMFrame index="0" keyMode="9728">

                  <elements/>

                </DOMFrame>

              </frames>

            </DOMLayer>

    Basically look for any <frames> tags that don't have anything in them. These are harmless to remove as they are not adding anything to your file anyway.

    Now you can open the .flv and save it as a .fla again if you wish.

    This seems like a trivial thing for Adobe to be able to fix. If it can't handle empty frames from CS4, then it shouldn't create them in the first place.

    Hope this helps someone. . .

    dikuno10
    dikuno10
    Known Participant
    May 29, 2010

    You're all very unlucky to get this problem. I don't know why you guys got the error when transitioning from Flash CS4 to CS5. My transition went perfectly fine, and the game I was developing went through perfectly clean.

    Sorry about your problems

    dikuno <><

    P.S. By the way, that file that was mentioned "textLayout_1.0.0.595.swz", is created whenever you put in TLF text that is edited at runtime via ActionScript and use Runtime Shared Library (RSL) preloading. Did you leave all your text boxes be, or convert them all to TLF?

    P.P.S.S. I was very lucky that I didn't lose my project when I transitioned, as my current game is actually due in around a week. Hoepfully none of your projects that you lost are due in a week.

    P.P.P.S.S.S. Imagine if this happened to Alan Becker while he was working on Animator vs. Animation II (it took him five months).

    P.P.P.P.S.S.S.S. I feel especially sorry for the guy who spent three months on his online multiplayer real-time game. Must be a real shame to lose all your work after all those late nights and sore backs...

    P.P.P.P.P.S.S.S.S.S. If you don't know what Animator vs. Animation is, you should watch the animations. You can find them on YouTube - just look up "Animator vs. Animation" and "Animator vs. Animation 2".

    P.P.P.P.P.P.S.S.S.S.S.S. Sorry about all the PostScripts.

    M
    Mwni
    Participant
    May 29, 2010

    Hey,

    If you have time to answer it would be awesome!

    Well,the work of more than a month is now gone....well...fortune, right?

    I didn't convert the textfields into TLF text.

    You work on a game too?

    Well could you tell me something about it? I'm curious.

    Really? It took Alan Becker 5 month?

    I relly enjoy his animations!

    bye, and thanks for your time!

    PS. I would have another .fla file....would you mind, if you could check

    this one too?

    It's in the attachment

    PPS. By the way, I'm actually german, so if there is some bad grammar,

    please ignore it

    bye

    dikuno10
    dikuno10
    Known Participant
    May 29, 2010

    My game? Oh, yes. It isn't really that complicated. It's just like an electronic board game. But still, I would have lost nearly a month's work, which would have been pretty bumming.

    I don't see any attachment, though.

    Keep an eye open around the Forums. I'll be starting a new thread soon where everyone is free to complain about Fireworks, Flash Pro, Flash Catalyst and Illustrator CS5 crasing. Maybe, if I can gather enough replies, it can be sort of like a petition, and we can get Adobe to release some patches!

    (Oh, and good patches, not faulty ones that bring in as much problems as they do solve.)

    N
    Niki_Winston
    Participant
    May 29, 2010

    Its look like problem with assets in library that has a russian character.

    M
    Mwni
    Participant
    May 28, 2010

    Hi,

    I have the same problem!


    I've been working on this project for 3 month now.

    It's a multiplayer-realtime game.

    Well, I wanted to continue this project with flash cs5, because of the new code features, the better interface...etc...

    I didn't backup, because I thought: were would be a problem with adobe???(Damn I was stupid -.-)

    Is there any solution?

    I'm really destroyed .

    All my work......it's just gone....

    A
    Anonymous
    May 20, 2010

    Hi,

    I have the same issue, but i have no versionning system on this FLA, and have one (crached) version of this file ... So I'm screwed ...

    Adobe has no solution to fix this problem ?

    J
    Jinesh Vora
    Participating Frequently
    May 20, 2010

    Hello everyone. Although I have mentioned it in the beginning of the discussion, but still here you go again, for those who are new: go to this link http://www.sothink.com/product/flashdecompiler/index.htm and download trial version to atleast get your components back (note trial version won't get AS back). Some of them can be in modified version, but still it is better than nothing.

    I used for my project and I saved little time with it. And I am sure some of you who have big projects can save time as well and probably for small ones it can be blessings.

    R
    RusNimex
    Participant
    May 15, 2010

    Help me please! Some days worked over the project, and today FlashCS5 cannot open my project, inform on an erro:

    "Flash can not parse this document."

    or

    "An error occurred opening file 'F:\Rus\_site\??????? ??????\top_menu_anime_ver2.fla'
    The following JavaScript error(s) occurred:

    Cannot find file F:\Rus\_site\????????????? ???????\top_menu_anime_ver2.fla."


    What to do? Here there is no answer, but somebody can has solved this problem?

    1. When I worked over my project at first cancellation function has "Undo". I could not cancel action (Ctrl+Z did not work).
    2. The history list has disappeared from the screen (became empty).
    3. I have closed FlashCS5, having save my project.
    4. I can not open the project because of an error: "Flash can not parse this document."

    Help me please!

    N
    nrajbhan
    Participating Frequently
    May 17, 2010

    Hi,

    I emailed you off-list requesting your FLA file so we can investigate.  If you don't receive the email, please check your junk-mail filter.

    Thanks,

    Nivesh

    J
    Jinesh Vora
    Participating Frequently
    May 14, 2010

    I got the similar type of problem. My file was crashed when I was working on it and now when I try to open it, it passes the same error message on my output panel. This is the only file I have, PLEASE HELP.

    I also noticed that there is one new file with SWZ format created in the same folder, where I have the main file, with the name of textLayout_1.0.0.595.

    B
    BenLefflerAuthor
    Participant
    May 14, 2010

    Thankfully I just found out that I had Version Control auto enabled on my Windows 7 machine, so I'm back in business with a recent version... However, I have a colleague that this issue has also affected on more than one occasion - and it seems to be localised to saving a file as a CS5 .fla or .xfl  ... however the Save As CS4 .fla works just peachy. This could be a rather critical bug if more than a couple of people have hit this issue...

    Any Adobe techs wish to comment?

    J
    Jinesh Vora
    Participating Frequently
    May 14, 2010

    Well in my case I had CS4 file opened and saved through CS5, so I  don't know which version it was saved to. But I found one interesting  software, SWF Decompiler, on another forum discussion:  http://forums.adobe.com/message/2812507#2812507. But you have to purchase the software to get your AS back.

    Ben, you are right. This should be fixed... Hello, is there any Adobe Tech. looking at this discussion?

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